The subject matter herein relates generally to electrical connectors having ground buses.
In computers and other applications, it is common to form a plurality of electrical connections between two printed circuit boards. These connections can be achieved through an interface between an edge of one printed circuit board and an electrical connector mounted on the other printed circuit board. Each application requires a certain orientation of the boards relative to each other. For example, the application may require that the boards be positioned perpendicular to each other. Other applications may require the boards to be positioned parallel to each other.
One way to achieve a parallel interface is to mount a right angle electrical connector on a printed circuit board which receives the edge of the other board. The right angle electrical connectors typically include a housing with contacts arranged in rows to mate to a mating printed circuit board. The housing supports the contacts in a right angle orientation. The contacts typically comprise signal contacts arranged in pairs isolated from other pairs of signal contacts by ground contacts in order to minimize crosstalk between the pairs. However, known electrical connectors are not without disadvantages. For instance, while the ground contacts do isolate signal pairs, the length of the ground contacts between the mating interface at the mating circuit board and the mounting interface at the mounting circuit board leads to resonances or resonance noise. The resonance noise is due to standing electromagnetic waves created at the ends of the ground contacts that propagate along the ground contacts and cause the electrical potential of the ground contact to vary along the length. The resonance noise can couple to signal pairs to degrade the signal performance. The resonance noise and crosstalk between signal pairs increases as the electrical connectors are used to convey more data at faster data rates and transmitted at higher frequencies. The resonance noise also increases as the length of the ground contacts between grounding locations increases.
A need remains for an electrical connector that provides signal pair isolation and that reduces resonance noise that degrades signal performance.